Movement for a People’s Party

Yet as result of last week’s election, the establishment Dems feel vindicated. Ralph Northam, the newly elected governor in Virginia, is a conservative Democrat who proudly voted for George W. Bush twice. Recently, he announced that he would sign a bill to ban sanctuary cities. New Jersey’s governor-elect, Phil Murphy, is a former Goldman Sachs executive. In both states’ Democratic primaries, the Dem Party successfully worked to eliminate the progressive candidate. The DNC and DCCC are already stacking the 2018 primaries with conservative Blue Dog Dems who are safely in Wall Street’s pocket. They have spent millions of dollars shutting down progressives instead of taking on Republicans.

They are saying loud and clear that “we don’t need or want progressives.” We are saying loud and clear that “our people’s party is going to leave them in the dust.”

Our MPP field organization is gearing up for the challenge. We have begun coalition building in several states. Alex, regional lead from Florida, spoke on the call about how Podemos in Spain built their coalition party. He is recruiting college students and Our Revolution members to MPP. Aside from those constituencies, please reach out to DSA and local union chapters in your area and ask them if they would like to be part of a coalition for a new progressive party. Each conversation with a potential ally brings us one step closer to a society that fulfill’s Franklin Roosevelt’s dream of a second bill of rights and Martin Luther King’s vision of a universal basic income.

To help with this first step, the MPP website will be up soon where you’ll find our Coalition Building Guide, the Potential Coalition Members submission form, and the MPP Organizing Guide. You can catch last week’s call right here.

It’s important to share the recent groundbreaking Gallup poll showing that 61 percent of Americans are calling for a major new party that represents their needs, a record high. You can also share last week’s CNN poll showing that the Democratic Party has hit a 25 year low in favorability, 37%, making it as unpopular as Donald Trump. The Democratic Party has not been this unpopular since the internet was born. MPP is here to answer the call of the majority of Americans who are “desperate for a third major political party.”

There was much activity on the media front for our launch. Nick was interviewed by Jimmy Dore, the Washington Post, IVN, the Washington Times, the Huffington Post, and RT America News Live. For those in the San Francisco Bay Area, Nick will keynote the Human Agenda Banquet in San Jose on Saturday, Dec. 9 and host an informal get together with supporters on Sunday, Dec. 10th.

Thank you all for being with us on our first Movement for a People’s Party conference call! We’ve come a long way from our first Draft Bernie call, and you’ve made it all possible. We have a maniac in the White House and an “opposition party” that is privately reassuring billionaires that it has no intention of changing. It’s up to us to offer the American people a viable progressive populist alternative. If we don’t, the far right or the billionaires will exploit the situation to create their own new party, filling the tremendous antiestablishment void and taking our country in an even worse direction. The 2016 election was a grave warning of what happens when the right wing is the only one to offer an antiestablishment alternative. We must prevent that warning from becoming foreshadowing.

With the Democratic Party working furiously to reel us back into incrementalism, we must hold fast to the principles that awoke the political revolution, chief among them: a party funded by the oligarchs can never represent the people. Many progressive movements before ours have gone into the Democratic Party with the mission of supporting only progressives. Slowly they have all morphed into “Blue no matter who” extensions of the corporate Democrats. We must refuse to lower our standards and tread the path that so many progressive movements already have. We must learn from their mistakes and make this the moment that we declare our independence – the moment we break free, build a people’s party, and usher in a 21st century progressive era.

With love and gratitude,

The Movement for a People’s Party team